(Los Angeles) Police on Thursday began dismantling barricades erected at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) by students protesting the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, as they had done the day before on several other campuses in the United States, where arrests took place.
Early in the morning, the police, equipped with riot gear, removed wooden planks, AFP noted.
Several demonstrators were then arrested, we can see in images broadcast by the television channel CNN.
Clashes broke out during the night on this campus when a large group of counter-protesters, many masked, attacked a pro-Palestinian camp set up on a lawn, noted an AFP photographer.
The attackers had tried to break through an improvised barricade around the camp. Demonstrators and counter-protesters then clashed with sticks and threw projectiles at each other.
PHOTO RYAN SUN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
UCLA, May 1, 2024
UCLA President Gene D. Block had warned before the violence against the presence of people from outside the campus. The incidents “have caused, especially among our Jewish students, deep anxiety and fear,” he added.
On Sunday, pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli activists, supported by numerous demonstrators arriving from outside, came to blows, with shoving and insults.
Dismantled camps
At the University of Texas at Dallas, police intervened Wednesday to evacuate a protest camp and, according to the institution, arrested at least 17 people for “criminal trespass.”
Law enforcement arrested several people at Fordham University in New York the same day and dismantled an encampment set up that morning on campus, officials said.
Also on Wednesday, around 300 people were arrested in New York at two university sites, police announced during a press conference.
During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, the police had already dislodged by force the pro-Palestinian demonstrators barricaded in a building of the prestigious Columbia University in Manhattan, where the student mobilization in support of Gaza started.
“The police were brutal and aggressive with them,” Meghnad Bose, a Columbia student who witnessed the scene, told AFP.
“They arrested people randomly […]several students were injured to the point that they had to be hospitalized,” denounced a coalition of student groups supporting the Palestinians of Columbia in an Instagram post.
“I regret that we have reached this point,” reacted Minouche Shafik, the president of the university, on Wednesday.
The demonstrators are fighting “for an important cause”, but the recent “acts of destruction” carried out by “students and external activists” led her to resort to the police, she explained , also denouncing “anti-Semitic remarks” made during these gatherings.
Other encampments were also dismantled early Wednesday on the campuses of the University of Arizona in Tucson and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the southwest and north of the United States, respectively, according to media reports. local.
Biden “should speak out”
For two weeks, actions in support of Gaza have multiplied across the American territory, from California to major universities in the northeast, reminiscent of demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
The students call on establishments to cut ties with patrons or companies linked to Israel and denounce Washington’s support for its Israeli ally.
Unlike other institutions, Brown University in the state of Rhode Island announced that it had reached an agreement with the demonstrators. This provides for the dismantling of their encampment in exchange for a university vote in October on a possible “divestment” from “companies that enable and profit from the genocide in Gaza”.
According to an AFP count, the police have carried out arrests on at least 30 university sites since April 17.
Images of riot police intervening on campuses have gone around the world and are causing strong reactions in the political world, six months before the presidential election in a polarized country.
The White House on Wednesday condemned a “small percentage of students who cause disorder.”
“Students have the right to go to class and feel safe,” said Karine Jean-Pierre, the executive spokesperson, adding: “We will continue to emphasize that it is necessary to denounce anti-Semitism. »
During a meeting Wednesday in Wisconsin, former President Donald Trump said that “New York was under siege last night.” President Joe Biden “should speak out,” he said.